CyberMummy 2010

A bit like winning a luxury holiday with no flights………….

Now please, please don’t get me wrong here, I had a super fantastic day on Saturday and the best bit for me was meeting for the first time all these wonderful, nay remarkable women. These people that I am overjoyed to call my friends and with whom I have shared so many ups, downs and just middlings!

The mummy blogging world is just full of so many inspirational and amazing people and I feel truly blessed to be part of it.

So lets talk about the day, well firstly a big hats of to Suzanna, Sian and Jen for having the will and wherewithal to pull together such a great event, if can not have been an easy task and I was honoured to have been able to attend the inaugural conference, thanks to a wonderful Anonymous benefactor and to Carex for sponsoring me.

Anyone who met me will realise that I am a pretty open and honest person and that hopefully I come across as that on the blog too and also that I am a pretty positive person, so don’t get the wrong end of the stick with these comments.

What would have made the day better for me:

I was fortunate that there was a mishap with my freebies from Carex top giveaway, as they was so much stuff being given away that people wouldn’t have had room for them.  I should have taken my old lady shopping trolley with me, next time please can I have vouchers for the products that I can collect at a shop or apply online for them.  But I do have samples of the great Carex Goodies I reviewed here, so please e-mail me with your name and address and we will get them posted out to you.

I sat through the content, stats and influence and also the working with brands sessions and have some constructive critique on them.

lets start with the content – I would have loved to hear more from India Knight and also heard from top bloggers about what they think is key with content.

Actually I really wish I had the balls to get up and walk out of this one.  I was hoping this session would remove the mystique surrounding technorati authority and how to use your statistics to help you blog.  For me the whole session fell flat from the start when there wasn’t even a blogger on the panel and the best bit when Jax from Making it up outgeeked Ladygeek, which wasn’t all that hard to do (especially when she confessed her husband did all the techie stuff).   I want to learn more about self hosting, the pros and cons of each platform, meta tags, links etc, so next year please can we work on this session.

I lived blogged from the Working with Brands sessions (wow that was not easy, so many things to listen too and I do not type fast enough).  My feelings about this were it was very US centric.  We don’t have a blogher type organisation dealing with reviews and working with brands here in the UK, yes it is great to here about a successful model, but I want more.

I wanted to hear more from Natalie Lue on how she makes it work for her, how many people read her e-books and how she is managing to make a living from blogging.

I would have liked Leapfrog to put show us a brand ambassador, rather than talk about it  (Samantha my boys would love to review the new Leapster Explorer) and I would have liked MS&L to have talked to the bloggers who have recently been on a trip to the Pampers factory, rather than just put down their PR company.

I would have liked opinion of how much is too much, how to work out what to charge for your time, rather than being told to value it.

This was a real highlight for me and i was honored to be included as a keynote speaker and wow, what a roller coaster that was.  I laughed and I cried listening to some inspirational women read out their blog posts.  To hear it in their own voice, with their intonation was just……….  well beyond words.  For me this is why I blog and this is why I read blogs, these woman have something to say and blogging gives them a voice.

Linda, dear Linda you made me laugh so much I nearly wet myself.  You do a mean impression of Jo Brand.  I only wish we could have seen more of you and I am sorry that you had to attend such a sad event prior to coming.  I do have to admit to being rather crap at it all and spend it eating cupcakes I had pinched from a nearby stand!

It was a fantastic day, I had an amazing time and met just the best people.  I can not wait to do it all again.